Charles Bowden was an American non-fiction author, journalist and essayist based in Las Cruces, New Mexico. His journalism appeared regularly in Harper’s GQ, and other national publications. He was the author of several books of nonfiction, including Down by the River. In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden blazed a trail of fire from the deserts of the Southwest to the centers of power where abstract ideas of human nature hold sway—and to the roiling places that give such ideas the lie. He claimed as his turf "our soul history, the germinal material, vast and brooding, that is always left out of more orthodox (all of them) books about America" (Jim Harrison, on Blood Orchid ).